All The Day Holiday - The Things We’ve Grown To Love
Record Label: Linc Star Records
Release Date: August 4, 2009
As if their aerial, ultra-sweet atmosphere pop wasn’t angelic enough, All The Day Holiday just had to throw in that they’re also down with the Big Man. Vocalist and main lyricist Dan Simmons is an unblemished talent, his purity manifesting into confidence throughout the four Cincinnati pew-grazers’ new full-length, The Things We’ve Grown To Love. Tones and melodies that are loose but accurate; everything on this album soars higher than the skies, and by the time the album comes to a close, there’s enough goodness to make a listener feel unworthy. Read: me.
But that doesn’t stop me from feeling All The Day Holiday. The enchantment and gorgeous intentions of The Things We’ve Grown To Love is immediate. Album opener “Autumn” starts with a token lead: urgent guitars, pulsating effects busting through the seams, vocal lines that draw maps across several landscapes and then a lyric that assures “We’re caught up in/A thousand spiderwebs and lies/So let it go, let the pages turn on their own” and then “I promise you we’ll make it out alive.” A key gut-jerking that “this is something real” (as the band puts it on “Real Time”) gives All The Day Holiday a mystic that there is something unbeknownst to us all, and they’re just helping us understand that. But above those virtuous ideals, All The Day Holiday are still a bit naïve. And so are we all - the combination of this all is what gauges The Things We’ve Grown To Love at a mesmerizing level of emotive. Similar experiences have been had with bands like Lovedrug and Pompeii, but All The Day Holiday is the new player on the frontlines of tingly auras.
But enough of these gushy sentiments. The beauty of The Things We’ve Grown To Love has a lot more to do with Matt Malpass production and the band’s nerve for laying pop atmospheres akin to Mae or Days Away. Every track on the album, with the exception of acoustic ender “Invisible”, is a sophisticated calculation of delay and sounds as colors. Despite being new to our ears, All The Day Holiday has the structure of a band who has toyed around with their sound for more than a few years (and was previously splashing around in the screamo genre with former band, Against The Nations). This shows in their secure delivery and precision.
On “La Voyage”, Simmons belts it like a canary for the simple but colossal chorus: “You said that we’d never make it/It never phased me/It never changed me… I’m on my own time now,” resulting in a feel-good pop moment. It is, similar to choruses of other big tokens like nostalgic slow-breathing “Flowers and Fireworks” and the snappy hook of “Cheers”, a showcase of the band’s ability to sculpt melody without sacrificing ambiance or continuity. But the shiniest star in their arsenal of already-gleamers (and seriously, these guys are fucking bright as is) would be Simmons. I hear no trace of cigarettes or vice - only poise. Swamped occasionally by his band’s crucial swells (like on “Greener”), the competing wingspans of Simmons and the rest of the band would be All The Day Holiday’s only pitfall, and that’s barely something to complain about. Well, that and the album’s straight posture and natural beauty, allowing cynics like me get too excited about little bands from Cincinnati. There’s only up from here.
Got it on itunes last week, after listening to their myspace for the past few months. Great stuff. A very unique, indie sound. Very good album as a whole also. It's a top 5 disc for me this year.
How similiar to lydia is this? I've been in such a funk lately when it comes to music, and I keep putting Illuminate on because it's a great drive-to-work-at-6am-cd. I'm hoping this can keep me from overplaying Illuminate.
One of my favorites of 2009 as well. Cheers Julia. Been way too long since the last review, but damn glad you're back. Definitely one of your most well-written, too. You consistently churn out stuff that's far better than most music mags.
I remember seeing that these guys came to Fort Wayne once. Bands never come here. After reading how much everyone loves this, I'm regretting not going to see them.
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